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Vox Pop: What default settings would you change?
Merlin Mann | Aug 21 2007
As I am wont to do, I was thinking out loud on Twitter this morning.
I'm convinced that, for better or worse, a lot of computer-related habits come straight out of using the default settings. For example a stock Mail.app install checks your email every 5 minutes (I reset mine to 'Manual') and, without interdiction, Apple's mail program will also create all your new messages as "Rich Text" (Nuh uh. Mine? 'Plain Text'). And then, in some cases, even if you want to do things differently, you have to swim upstream to do so. In the case above, I can't set iCal or gCal's default to anything but 1 hour (any more than I can autoset multiple alarms1). God only knows what poor John Gruber would give to have Mail.app more easily let people quit top-posting. The Question to You:What default settings would you love to change in popular applications? Taken a step further, what excellent habits could be taught to users by looking at defaults as something beyond familiarity and day one ease-of-use? Could the aggressive use of smart or personalized defaults create a generation of short-meeting-makers and intersperse-responders? 68 Comments
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 I wish I could remember...Submitted by Paul (not verified) on August 21, 2007 - 7:50am.
I wish I could remember all of the details, but Adium is a wonderful IM program, once you've spent several hours configuring the damn thing. What I remember most clearly was that notification was a constant nag. Every time a friend dropped on- & off-line I'd be interrupted. After installing Growl, and progressively turned off various notifications, it's finally where I'd like it to be. Actually, a lot of Growl-ready apps default to notifying you about every little thing - they're flashing and they're beeping. I can't stand it anymore! They're blinking and beeping and flashing! Why doesn't somebody pull the plug? » POSTED IN:
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